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I think about that in terms of countries too. I mean, between states is even crazier, but just thinking about this planet as a whole, it becomes abundantly clear to me that morals and ethics within a society are entirely man-made and subjective.

[–][score hidden] 31 minutes ago
Can you imagine NOT breaking the law... even if your opinion (and entire states opinion as well as mine) is that it should not be illegal, fact remains the law is being broken. Do the crime, do the time.

My reply: Fuck that attitude. America has a problem with throwing people in jail. "The fact is that the law is being broken." The law is broken. I'm not going to look at the law like it is black and white anymore.

Do the crime, don't get caught, hope that we can change the law before too many more people get thrown in prison.

"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." - Thomas Jefferson

*Edit - Upon closer examination it appears that Jefferson may not have written this despite numerous online sources claiming it so. However we know that he had written similar things in spirit as have other great people like Martin Luther King. Also for what it's worth we know that Thomas Jefferson grew hemp which would be illegal under current federal law.

If we don't know who said it first, I'm pretty sure that plagiarism, if it can be called that, is all that bad - a harmless omission of source during an anonymous source during a speech shouldn't really discredit anyone if the speaker shares the sentiment and couldn't have said it better.

His doctoral dissertation at Boston University included a decent amount of plagiarised material as well, which is a bit more serious. Once again, though, that matters fuck-all when it comes to his activism work.

When I was a teenager it was always MUCH easier to get pot than it was to get alcohol. I had five to ten people I could call day or night who would deliver some pot right to me in under half an hour. If I wanted a case of beer or a bottle of whiskey I was shit out of luck nine times out of ten.

I remember when I was a teenager too, we would stand in front of stores and ask random people to buy us cigarettes and beer. As you said, shit out of luck 9/10 times. Weed? Just ask the guy standing around the corner.

And this is a totally predictable consequence of prohibition. Liquor store owners have permits and reputations and all sorts of regulations they have to answer to if they want to keep the store running. Your local illegal drug dealer answers to nobody but himself or other criminals, and there's basically no additional disincentive not to sell to teens.

Drug warriors do more to put drugs in the hands of kids than anybody else.

"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

From wikipedia

The relationship between Thomas Jefferson and slavery has been extensively debated by his biographers, and by scholars of slavery.[1] He owned plantations totaling thousands of acres and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime.

Disobey means "defy, disregard, resist, ignore, oppose". You don't have to actively break a law to disobey it.

Also, I wouldn't discount some future scenario where you might want to try some form of marijuana as medicine, and it need not be smoked. The lifetime risk of developing cancer for someone in the U.S. is about 40%, and there many other ailments that it is sometimes helps with.

It isn't that America necessarily has a boner for throwing people in jail. It's the fact that it's a racket, and 70-80% focused on substance possession. Private corrections companies lobbying for laws to keep jails full, so that state and federal prisons are full and overflow goes to private prisons at a profit paid by tax dollars. Then there's the DEA, who wants to retain, no, increase their budget. Courts, lawyers, state and local police forces etc all have major shit to lose in legalization. See; budget.

Until Americans stand up and say, "You know, it might be a little bit wrong to allow multi-billion dollar international companies to lobby for mandatory sentences so that they may profit from imprisoning US citizens for possession of controlled substances." there will be serious flaws in the way we handle substances.

My $.02, legalize but regulate it all. I can go tell a doctor my back hurts and get some OxyContin. I'm nervous and I'll get some Xanax bars. I can't focus and I'll get some Adderol. Besides, gimme $50 and a bus ticket to any town in America, and I'll find your poison within a day. Some say legalize weed but leave the "hard stuff" illegal. I say fuck that. Doctors prescribe the hard stuff everyday, and laws don't stop people from doing heroin. Prohibition doesn't work.

I'm of the opinion that the 'hard stuff' should be administered at a clinic for free. People are going to do it anyway, so we might as well crush the black market. Administer it to a user for free. I'd say that if you do it though, at that medically licensed clinic with trained staff for free, then I would be OK with requiring some people to stay there, and there be security to protect everyone there.

But seriously, turn a fucking TV on in there and you'll have no problems. That's for the 'hard stuff'. The only thing hard about it is when they OD, use dirty needles, or have to rob someone to fork over money.

I don't think the private prison industry has quite the clout you're attributing to it, they're a very small percentage of the total prison system. I don't think they're acceptable, but they aren't the reason for the continued drug war.

Far more lobbying comes from the prison guard and police unions, along with 'tough on crime' politicians.

I can't imagine how absolutely morally and intellectually bankrupt you must have to be to see something which is clearly wrong and say "BUT THE LAW SAYS IT'S OKAY, SO WE MUST NOT QUESTION IT."

Imagine where human civilization and society would be, had we never ended slavery, genocide, discrimination, and oppression because it was codified into law.

It's hard to imagine how incredibly weak and cowardly the man who makes that statement is. Thankfully, there are people who will stand up against injustice regardless of the declarations of the oppressor.

It's actually kinda shocking how many people feel those people still deserve to be in jail for the remainder of their sentences.

I can see the logic: "You broke the law knowingly", but I don't think that's valid in this case.

We're basically going through the process of admitting that marijuana possession is not immoral or dangerous. We're basically saying those laws were wrong. We should, at the bare minimum, pardon them and let them get on with their lives. It's the right thing to do.

Conservative and religion perception is one that from authority comes righteousness, and so the immoral action isn't the deed but ignoring authority.

The biggest story of this is Abraham and his son Issac. People actually believe that if God tells you to kill your son, you should do it because to disobey God is a worse sin than killing your own child.

How many people are prisoned for small, personal consumption weights, of marijuana? When I say this I mean for this and nothing else. I can Honestly say I have never heard of anyone who was put in jail for only being busted with marijuana. [Serious]

As a illinois resident it sickens me. Considering that illinois is heavy democratic its a shame we havent went the way of colorado or washington. But illinois is always last to do shit (last in the usa for concealed carry).

That's actually the primary reason I don't even consider vacations in states like Nevada. My body. My mind. My right. If they're willing to slap federal charges on people with less than a gram of weed (technically speaking they have that power) I don't really feel like participating in their economy.

To add to this point, as a hemophiliac, my medicine costs $500,000 a year for Medicaid when I'm working. Like when I was making $12,000 a year at Burger King living with my parents and costing about $9000 a week in medicine. If they gave me $50,000, I could live comfortably and potentially pursue internet/work-at-home business and simply agree to live a sedentary life and only take medicine when really necessary.

Sad that there's no logic allowed in our version of capitalism. It's all about generating as much demand and waste as possible in order ensure continued income. If those prisons weren't filled, they would eventually need to stop getting such a high amount of taxes. Can't have that. We need to ruin people's lives in order to keep things at an average rate.

Honestly, having done LSD, I think I can safely say that the actual experience is startling in it's casual, fantastic mandanity. There were no pink elephants or physical tulpas, just reality without preconception, which is actually a more awe-inspiring than the other two combined, if you think about it. It's the sort of trip you could not in a million years describe after the fact without liberal use of cliche, but at the time it's the most sincere, serene feeling on earth.

I've had this discussion with a friend before. I truly believe you should be required to get screened before permitted to being able to do LSD. I would feel very bad to have people that are prone to future cases of mental illnesses like schizophrenia and the such to develop it much earlier than their time. While the evidence isn't quite conclusive, there does seem to be a tendency for these type of illnesses to awaken much earlier in a person's life with the use of LSD.

Adults are adults. They make their own decisions and live with the responsibility.

People can willingly chose to ingest even harmful substances (like cigarettes) and they WILLINGLY DAMAGE THEMSELVES. That should be completely acceptable because it is absolutely not your place to say others can't.

Yes. You have to make arrests on things like DUIs or drug possession to convince the public that there is a problem. If there aren't many arrests, most people will assume there isn't much of a problem.

Even if you don't make arrests, you can use the man hours or dollars spent to justify it. "We had to spend X to fight marijuana in 2013; it's obviously a major problem in our city."

And those costs are paid for by anti-drug funding. Those costs, and tons more money for military-grade weapons, vehicles, etc. If the funding from the DoJ or elsewhere didn't cover the costs, these departments wouldn't be able to afford those expensive, deadly toys. Police also steal money.. er... confiscate potential drug money from anyone they want.

Easy money for the police department, who gets to claim X number of arrests/tickets (hopefully overturned convictions would go against this number) which gets them more funding.

Not easy money for the rest of the taxpayers, who are footing the bill for this bullshit, including the price of prosecution.

Same thing happened to me last July, I was in the BACKSEAT of my friends car, cop claimed that he was speeding(which was bullshit because my friend is extremely cautious of speeding since hes had a speeding ticket once). The car was full of kids my age (20 years) and the cop poked his head in the car window and the all-power justifiction of "smelling weed" in the car, when we haven't smoked anything in the car whatsoever. The entire force of Elmhurst was behind our car, pulling individual persons out the car, searching us without our consent, cuffing us for very small amounts of marijuana and one piece of paraphernalia, and letting an unlicensed passenger of the car drive my friends car (she didnt have anything illegal on her person). Not to mention, after the court hearings, the speeding charges were IMMEDIATELY dropped (hmmmmmm). So in total, three of us paid ~$3500 in court fines and ticket fines.

The only legitimate concern I've heard is how difficult it is to test drivers for it. But most people go for something stupid and sentimental like they don't want their kids doing it, as if illegal drug dealers are IDing kids to make sure they're of age. Until their kid gets caught with some and is facing charges, then it's just a little weed and the kid should get off for it.

What is needed is a really good field diagnostic for key characteristics of driving capability, like concentration, reaction time, etc.

Then we can stop worrying about whatever base differences in these capabilities the person might have and whatever they might have done or be (pot, alcohol, pills, tired, stressed, etc.) that affect these capabilities and just test the capabilities themselves.

That's an institutional reason. While a legitimate point, the real issue at hand is how capable the driver is at operating their vehicle.

Standard sobriety tests serve this function. Though, for weed, I might tack on an additional test to make sure the driver's response time is still within an acceptable range. The tests for alcohol seem primarily concerned with the driver's ability to remain balanced--something really easy to do when you're a seasoned smoker.

Insurance is all about data. The current skatepark situation is an example.

Through the 80's insurance was the reason for skate parks closing because the rates were high based on the danger and the insurers perception that an inherently dangerous activity would require loads of insurance because of all the parents who would sue.

In the 90's skateboarding went to the streets as a result. Buildings got some minor damage and security guards got lots of hassel... but never did anyone sue. People made their own skateparks in public, no one sued.

Finally the public came to see that it was less expensive and safer for everyone if the public built parks for people to skateboard at because we knew no one was going to sue and it would cut down on the gathering of skateboarders in places that were never meant to put up with the punishment of modern street skateboarding.

There are some pretty good parallels to cannabis here, particularly with respect to the driving danger everyone talks about but no one has any evidence to back.

Well those tests aren't really that great for checking sobriety. I mean most people can't preform half of those tests sober, and even if you do they are still allowed to take you in if they don't like the look of you.

Exactly. I don't care what's in your body but if you can't drive right now you need to be off the road. I don't care if you're tired, distraught, high, or were issued a license in error. Doesn't matter why, and anyway having a test per chemical we need to look for isn't practical.

My uncle who was a cop for 30 years said he's never arrested one person for a marijuana related D.U.I. There shouldn't be a "test" IMO. Let's be honest, driving after smoking marijuana, especially if you're a casual smoker, is nothing. I do it all the time, have been for 4 years, never been pulled over once in my life. But if you're new to smoking, and you just smoked a good amount of top shelf bud, there's no way you should be driving.. Most new smokers would be freaked out by the thought of driving when their really stoned, so they usually just wait it off, which is why the accident rate caused by marijuana is SO low. But hey, if you're really high and shouldn't be driving, a cop should just do a standard sobriety test.

I've been driving around high for years. I have never had a single problem (well, okay, maybe waiting extra long to make a turn or slowing down way before a stop sign... but those aren't really problems).

Yeah, I actually think you may even be a safer driver while high. Think about it. You're sober and the light is about to turn red any second, most will just floor it and try to make the light because they're sober and have nothing to worry about. Someone who has been smoking would obey the law most likely with fear of being pulled over. Or someone sober will drive more aggressively, switch lanes often, speed 10 miles over the limit, while its the complete opposite after smoking.

The only legitimate concern I've heard is how difficult it is to test drivers for it.

So please, marijuana users - especially in WA and CO - be responsible about smoking while you're driving! Help us prove to the rest of the country that weed can be used safely and responsibly in a normal functioning society. Don't ruin it by being an idiot, and don't put other people in danger.

I agree... yet I know from experience that there are times when driving stoned is unsafe.

The reason you haven't heard about it is because it has never been a problem.

That's good - then continue on! I'm not going to stop saying this, though. Just like there are irresponsible people who use alcohol (or, hell, cough drops), some people who use pot are not very mature or responsible, so I think it's the responsibility of the community to keep pushing responsibility and good judgment. We need to continue to hold ourselves to a high standard.

There are studies that have shown that while stoned drivers are slightly impaired, their impairment is compensated by taking fewer risks, focusing more on the task, and safer driving practices because they realize they are high (e.g. not overtaking other cars and driving at exactly or below the speed limit).

So the studies haven't shown that it was safer than completely sober driving, it wasn't remotely close to driving while intoxicated on alcohol.

Studies are great for trying to make driving stoned legal, but studies aren't going to convince anybody until weed is legalized everywhere. Until then I don't think it's a good idea for people to drive blazed because even if it is safe, if you get into an accident or get pulled over you just became a statistic that adds fuel to prohibition's fire.

There have been several studies and there is plenty of data available. I'm not sure why people still like to pretend like high drivers will be that much of a threat.

May 28, 2010 Subjects exhibit virtually identical psychomotor skills on a battery of driving simulator tests prior to and shortly after smoking marijuana, according to clinical trial data published in the March issue of the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

Investigators did note, "Participants receiving active marijuana decreased their speed more so than those receiving placebo cigarette during (the) distracted section of the drive." Authors hypothesized that subjects' reduction in speed on this task suggested that they may have been compensating for perceived impairment. "[N]o other changes in driving performance were found," researchers concluded.

Legalization of medical marijuana is associated with increased
use of marijuana among adults, but not among minors. In addition, legalization is associated
with a nearly 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalitie [...]

I believe that is true in many cases - but I know for me, there are times where it is flat-out not safe for me to drive.

I am asking pot smokers to err on the side of caution because it is better to be safe than sorry about this stuff. Know yourself and your tolerance, and don't justify putting others in danger just because of a Mythbusters episode. The stakes are just too high (no pun intended).

I can buy that there are some cases where people are so drunk they don't know, but I would imagine most are low enough to where the person did know.

Speaking from experience, when I'm wasted I don't forget that I'm not supposed to drive. I also have responsible friends and have gotten wasted with them on countless occasions, and I've never had to stop one of my friends from driving.

I do have some friends that have gotten DUI's, and they fit into two categories. People who knew they shouldn't drive but made an exception and got caught... Or people who just don't give a shit about the law or the right thing and do it anyways.

My friends exgirlfriend just got a DUI and he was telling me "I kept telling her she was gonna get caught. She would drive drunk all the time."

His ex is about the last person I would term a scumbag or bad person. Had you not told me that, I never would have guessed it. She seems like an awesome girl. But she just straight up didn't give a shit for some reason.

That's ignoring how relatively unreliable even alcohol tests are, for drivers. Just because there's a method that works, doesn't mean that it works well. It's better to educate people not to drive under the influence, than it is to try to catch them doing it, or worse, after they've gotten in an accident while under the influence.

I know. When I was a kid I could buy weed with ease because any dealer would sell to me. Getting a bottle of alcohol was a fucking ordeal though because liquor stores are strict as shit about selling to minor.

If parents don't want their kids to do it, maybe they should try to do a little thing called "parenting". Teach your kids, educate them as to the issue, have an open discussion with your kids. Alot of people don't do this, and then act surprised when they find out their kids have been smoking, they just assume the rest of society will do the job for them.

IIRC Michigan did a study that showed only casual smokers (max 2 times per week) had any trouble driving high. They took medical patients and casuals and had them do a road test, get high, do another road test, get higher, another test and so on. Medical users never failed a road test.

When I worked as a Policeman, I found kids with dime bags all the time, I never arrested a single one. Its not worth my time, nor was it worth the effort to ruin the lives of people committing this form of civil disobedience.

I grew up in the hood and when I was younger, all cops were like this. They didn't give a shit about weed. They'd just make us dump it out on the side of the road because they were busy trying to stop real crime and the paperwork wasn't worth it. But shit changed for whatever reason and now they're taking people to jail for just having a weed pipe in the car.

The pipe actually carries stronger penalties than the stuff you put into it. It was some strange legislation that arose because some kid somewhere in Illinois smoked marijuana out of a pipe that had previously been used for another substance (never heard what the other substance was) and died. From that point on, the cost of fine and penalty for paraphernalia was something like double what the penalty was for actually having the marijuana.

Source: 2 friends were arrested years ago - 1 with a pipe, the other with a small amount of marijuana.

You don't have to tell me. I know someone who was arrested and charged for a pipe. It counted as a drug charge and they had to drop out of college because you can't get financial aid with a drug charge on your record.

On the subject of the racial disparity in drug arrests, despite similar rates of use:

The vast majority of arrests for marijuana possession are the byproduct of being apprehended for an unrelated, more serious manner.

The first half of the War on Drugs focused largely on relentless enforcement of heroin and crack cocaine laws in poor communities of color.7 But with the ebb of the crack epidemic in the late 1980s, law enforcement agencies began shifting to an easy target: marijuana. As a result, over the past 20 years police departments across the country have directed greater resources toward the enforcement of marijuana laws. Indeed, even as overall drug arrests started to decline around 2006, marijuana arrests continued to rise, and now make up over half of all drug arrests in the United States. In 2010, there were more than 20,000 people incarcerated on the sole charge of marijuana possession.

Stated simply, marijuana has become the drug of choice for state and local police departments nationwide. Between 2001 and 2010, there were 8,244,943 marijuana arrests, of which 7,295,880, or 88%, were for marijuana possession. In 2010 alone, there were 889,133 marijuana arrests - 300,000 more than arrests for all violent crimes

While illicit drugs are implicated in three quarters of incarcerations (75.9 percent), few inmates are incarcerated for marijuana possession as their controlling or only offense. Inmates incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails for marijuana possession as the controlling offense accounted for 1.1 percent (25,235) of all inmates and 4.4 percent of those incarcerated for drug law violations. Those incarcerated for marijuana possession as their only offense accounted for 0.9 percent (20,291) of all inmates and 2.9 percent of those incarcerated for drug law violations.

Very few people are going to prison simply for marijuana possession. Blacks have a higher rate of arrest for drug possession because they are more likely to have their person/property searched by the police in general. Harsher prison sentences are likely the result of having prior convictions.

ACLU report: Blacks in South Carolina arrested at nearly three times rate of whites for marijuana possession in 2010

“This is biased research,” Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said. “This is a case of someone starting off with a theory and then interpreting the facts to support that theory.”

Cannon said it’s hard to make judgments about the numbers without knowing the stories behind the arrests. “If you look at the folks in the jail who are charged with marijuana possession, it’s almost never the sole charge,” he said. “It’s usually marijuana found incidentally to an arrest on a number of other charges.”

No evidence of racial discrimination in criminal justice processing: Results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health

One of the most consistent findings in the criminological literature is that African American males are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of any other racial or ethnic group. This racial disparity is frequently interpreted as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and biased against African American males. Much of the existing literature purportedly supporting this interpretation, however, fails to estimate properly specified statistical models that control for a range of individual-level factors. The current study was designed to address this shortcoming by analyzing a sample of African American and White males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analysis of these data revealed that African American males are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated when compared to White males. This racial disparity, however, was completely accounted for after including covariates for self-reported lifetime violence and IQ. Implications of this study are discussed and avenues for future research are offered.

NIBRS data for drug offenses are particularly interesting, since some critics of the police have argued that “racial profiling” leads primarily to biased drug arrests. NIBRS data suggest otherwise; once again, the percentage of reported drug offenders who were black is about equal to the percentage of arrested suspects who were black.

There is another source of information that suggests blacks are arrested for drug crimes in proportion to their drug use and not because of police bias. Figure 3 shows Health and Human Services statistics on emergency room admissions for illegal drug use. Emergency room admissions are a reliable, independent indicator of who is using drugs; people do not end up in HHS’s statistics unless they are taking illegal drugs, and there is no reason to think drug-takers of different races are more or less likely to need emergency treatment. The graph shows that the black share of emergency room admissions for illegal drugs in 2002 was slightly higher than the black share of those arrested for drug offenses. If police were unfairly targeting blacks for drug arrests, their share of arrests would be higher than their share of drug-related trips to the emergency room.

Figure 1 compares offender information to arrest information for all the crimes included in the NCVS. For example, 55 percent of offenders in all robberies were black, 55.4 percent of robbers in robberies reported to police were black, and 54.1 percent of arrested robbers were black.

For most crimes, police are arresting fewer blacks than would be expected from the percentage of criminals the victims tell us are black (rape/sexual assault is the only exception). In the most extreme case, burglary, victims tell police that 45 percent of the perpetrators were black, but only 28 percent of the people arrested for that crime were black. If all the NCVS crimes are taken together, blacks who committed crimes that were reported to the police were 26 percent less likely to be arrested than people of other races who committed the same crimes.

These figures lend no support to the charge that police arrest innocent blacks, or at least pursue them with excessive zeal. In fact, they suggest the opposite, that police are more determined to arrest non-black rather than black criminals.

It's important to note that the only difference between possession and possession with the intent to distribute is often only the amount of drugs in possession.

The amount of drugs necessary to leap into a distribution charge is laughably small. And those arrests and prosecutions aren't caught by a simple search for possession arrests, even though the actual facts of the case are identical to other simple possession cases.

Wait, can the police seriously do that? I would imagine once they see/smell the weed it would be kinda hard to not arrest them, especially if there's another cop present. Wouldn't word eventually get around that you don't give a fuck about weed, thus leading to a suspension or termination?

Didn't your superiors confront you about having low possession busts? Teenagers with dimebags are like adults speeding on the freeway. Everyone knows everyone does it, that's why it's tough to be a good cop these days. Your boss will just tell you to bring more revenue in.

I already posted this elsewhere, but about 17 years ago when I was in highschool, I had a cop pull me over, ask me if I had anything on me. I just went ahead and admitted that I had a little bit of pot (about an 8th). I took it out, he put it in his pocket, told me it was late for me to be out and to go home. He drove away.

Only when it comes to enforcing victimless crimes. Murder, rape, grand larceny commited by bankers, profitering politicians taking massive bribes; none of this matters to the cops.

Selling/doing drugs that don't hurt anyone but the person choosing to use them, in jail forever. Taking $20 in exchange for a sexual favor, felony record for both parties!

None of these crimes are ever reported, because no one is harmed by them. The cops have to use surveillance just to find out if anyone is doing these things, or flat out be involved in the transactions as a party to the crime in order to catch people doing them.

I don't think it's "whopping." I'd venture to guess that a high percentage of any and all drug crimes are for simple possession. There are many more buyers and users than there are dealers -- for any product.

I like how if you actually follow the link and read the report you see that for most jurisdictions for which data are available, arrests for marijuana are at a 10-year low, and tickets haven't made up the difference-- signalling a multi-year shift in enforcement policy towards fewer arrests...

...but most of the comments in here are about for-profit prisons and jack-booted militarized thugs.

And the 98.7% number is from 2010.

The most recent number is:

In addition, Illinois ranks 5th in the nation when it comes to arresting marijuana possession offenders; with the majority of arrests for marijuana (84%) being misdemeanor possession offenses.

My takeaway from the report is that:

the ticketing program is effective, in most places its been implemented, at reducing arrests but it is not implemented consistently across the state and that consistent implementation would reduce arrests even further

there needs to be cohesion between state and local laws to remove ambiguity

a poll of Illinois residents found that most support decriminalization and it would bring cost savings to state and local budgets

in a different four year spans selected for study for the jurisdictions with the most reliable data, arrest rates declined between 21% and 46% post-ticketing implementation

So, arrests are down, tickets don't make up the difference, more and more jurisdictions are moving to tickets rather than arrests, but the cops are out to get you to fill up the private prisons run by their cronies.

The reality of this comment and how conflict with the narrative here exemplifies the dishonesty of people on either side, but especially here on reddit. I puff, but some of the shit I hear from my fellow pro mj people are just so absolutely one track minded and romantically victimized. I get a sense that the last step in this revolution the seem to imagine to many mj users won't be nothing less than public vindication of their sacred bond with their recreational drug of choice, which will never happen because by that time no one will even want to notice these people anymore.

Does anyone know what conviction rates are like for folks getting arrested for low amounts of pot? What percent of those arrests lead to prison time?

My girlfriend and I have a longstanding argument that I haven't been able to settle. She insists that they don't put people in prison for low amounts of pot. I think she's wrong. I have no idea what the numbers are like, and unfortunately, this article, and others I've found, only mention arrests. That doesn't tell the whole story...

It's fairly clear, legalise marijuana, and a LOT of people lose their job in law enforcement and prisons. Prisons of course often being run for profit, why would they want to stop a free flow of labour into the prison system, after all it only screws up the future of poor people, and they're not donating to political party funds, hell, many of them aren't even voting, so screw them right?

“…relentless color-prejudice is more often a cause than a result of the Negro's degradation…”-W.E.B. DuBois

The System of White Supremacy is becoming more and more costly. More and more non-white people are becoming aware that the War on Drugs is racist to the core. Considering that nationwide whites use more drugs (heroin, coke, crack, marijuana) at higher rates than non-whites, why is it that the healthy majority of those arrested are non-white?
Does this not constitute relentless color prejudice? The bogus War on Drugs is another ugly branch of the System of White Supremacy. But as I said, non-whites are becoming more conscious. The System of White Supremacy's days are numbered; they have been.

simple possession is what my arrest involved- i had a pipe, and the paraphernalia charge was more serious than the possession charge.
AND- the officer that arrested me was really cool about it- he could have easily given me a DUI, but didn't. He stopped me for rolling thru a stop sign, and could smell the pot i had been smoking. when i got out of the minivan he could tell that there is something wrong with my spine, and asked if i use it medicinally. I said yes. (Illinois has a medical marijuana law/program- but it really hasn't started up yet). He told me to tell the judge about it as well.
btw- the cop also let me use my cellphone at the scene to call my wife, so that she could get the bail money and come to the state police facility that i was going to be booked into. i never actually spent any time "behind bars", but just sat in a waiting area watching tv, waiting for them to do the processing.